It's time for Europe to step up in its own defense

Why would any other country rely on us for military equipment instead of working on their own? Yeah it costs money to setup

It costs a ton of money, especially research and development into high tech weapons. Very few countries for example even have the technology to build blades for jet turbines. There's half a dozen companies world wide that have the capability to make jet engines. Or even seemingly much simpler: making good ball bearings is surprisingly difficult and are required for lots of things. High quality optics? Extremely hard.

A weapons system pretty much all countries can assembly is the technical: a pickup truck with a heavy machine gun bolted to it. Making a car or a machine gun is already difficult and few countries have the metallurgy, precision engineering, trained workforce, etc. to make all the parts for them. The microelectronics and chips in the radio? Also not easy to make.

The supply chain is long, even for relatively simple systems. The more advanced the system, the fewer parts the local industry will be capable of producing.

R&D costs will be spread out over all production units. So if research costs 100 million, but you only build 20, it will be a hundred times more expensive than if you build 2000. That's how the F-35 is more capable and cheaper than previous generation fighter jets.

So to build your own stuff, you need to a fairly advanced and diversified industrial base in the first place. On top of that you need money and a big enough number of units for it to be financially viable.

Sweden makes its own fighter jet JAS 39 Gripen. However it imports the engines, electronics, radar, and some other essential parts from the USA. That somewhat better for Sweden because it keeps some of the money spent in the local economy and keeps a trained workforce around. It doesn't create strategic independence from the US though.

Europe is moderately self sufficient, but only for tactical level operations. No-one wanted to break the understanding on strategic level capabilities.

Europe has a long pattern on that front. Large scale militaries rarely sit idle for long. With multiple nuclear powers in play, that genie has been kept mostly bottled up for 75 years.

It's also worth noting that I don't think the UK, France and Germany (previously Prussia) have ever been on the same side in a large scale hot conflict. Figuring out how to do it, without it imploding in 20 years is a challenge. The original plan was NATO, but Russia has managed to neuter that via Trump.

France is self sufficient since during WW2 the US tried to force Churchill to stop supporting Charles De Gaulle and instead support a more easily controllable puppet (François Darlan). US was really close to succeed but Darlan's murder forced the US to finally accept against their will De Gaulle.

De Gaulle learned it and after the war he turned the country into anti-US politic with a complete and self sufficient army and a completely autonomous nuclear program ( UK still need US approve to use their nuke).

Why would any other country rely on us for military equipment instead of working on their own? Yeah it costs money to setup, but even in highschool I knew enough to know the US has, to put it lightly, done shady shit to its allies. Hell, it’s own people.

think about what spending in defense has done to our economy. healthcare, education, social services cost money. Basically since FDR the defense budget has grown decade after decade.

I agree about EU independence though, it's a valid point.

They can just stop supplying you with spare parts and the plane will not stay flying for very long.

you made an huge error: it's not a Gripen but a Rafale... Our french lady has two engines and the special french touch, can't be mistaken with the sweden lady :P

Also not an F-35, that's an F-15.

Also, the Dutch army has indicated it has no fucking clue where to spend all that additional money. They would quite literally drown in money. (NRC, mirror, both Dutch sources)

Edit: but yes, if the EU is to spend more money on defense, it should be spent in the EU, not sent to the American weapon lobby.

Thank you. My eye sacs just exploded.

Guess i'll be seeing it when it does test flights.

I live close to one of their big factories and testing grounds